Huge Dust Storm Strikes NASA’s Opportunity Rover

Huge Dust Storm Strikes NASA’s Opportunity Rover

Kristine Garrett
|
13 June, 2018, 22:38

This included Perseverance Valley or the site where Opportunity had been conducting science operations. NASAannounced last night that the current dust storm is now worse - in terms of total sunlight blocked - than the 2007 storm. According to NASA, the weather event the rover faced in 2007 had an opacity level around 5.5. Onboard instruments showed the rover's temperature to be -20° F (-29° C) at the latest data transmission, reducing the drain on the batteries while the systems generate heat of their own to help keep the rover warm.

The basic process for finding Martian organic compounds can be boiled down to two steps - separate organic molecules from the Martian rocks and sediments and give them an electric charge so they can be detected and identified by the mass spectrometer, NASA said.

"Engineers will monitor the rover's power levels closely in the week to come". The team handling the operations thought it won't be able to maintain a balance between low power and energy-intensive heaters created to protect its batteries from the Martian cold. Likewise, performing certain actions draws on battery power, but can actually expel energy and raise the rover's temperature.

The rover has proved hardier than expected by lasting almost 15 years, despite being designed for a 90-day mission.

NASA Opportunity rover's operations have been halted due to a raging dust storm on Mars. As soon as the orbiter team saw how close the storm was to Opportunity, they notified the rover's team to begin preparing contingency plans. "In a matter of days, the storm had ballooned".

Till June 8 this storm had already covered 7 million square miles and even more than that on Mars. It increased the atmospheric opacity in the region, creating a smog-like situation where most of the sunlight gets blocked out. Nighttime on Mars is extremely cold, but using Opportunity's heaters can drain the batteries.

"It's not unlike running a auto in the winter so that the cold doesn't sap its battery charge", NASA writes in a release.

It also goes without saying that men or women who will make the trip to another planet should be able to get back, which means blast off needs to be possible from Mars.

On the other hand, if this massive dust storm on Mars is lasting for longer than usual, the rover would experience, once again, the so-called Martian Cold, a phenomenon that destroyed NASA's Spirit Rover, the Opportunity's "brother", in 2010. They can start out of nowhere and continue for days or maybe even months.

"The question of whether life might have originated or existed on Mars is a lot more opportune now that we know that organic molecules were present on its surface at that time". The blue dot below is where NASA thinks Opportunity is located in the storm.

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